Green
by brandeee
Summary: Even the strongest walls come down eventually, and sometimes the only way to accomplish such a feat is simply to talk. A sketch of the first time Ulquiorra started to think about Orihime differently. Edit: now a twoshot.
1. Green

A/N: I'd had this idea in mind for awhile and realized that I really ought to write it before, you know, Ulqui gets himself killed. It started out as a UlquiHime shipfic, then more friendshipping... it ended up more as an idea of how any relationship at all could start between the two of them, given that he's, you know, not exactly the most friendly person in the world, to say the least.

_

* * *

[...] And the color green_

_welled up inside you like tears, and you woke._

"_In a Sheep's Eye, Darling," Margaret Hasse

* * *

_

It all happened after they had been there, pretending not to see each other, for a long time. Orihime was sitting in the high-backed chair and doing nothing but looking down at her hands, which folded tightly together in her lap. Ulquiorra was standing up against the wall next to the doorway, staring straight ahead (but what he was looking for was anyone's guess). It would have been hard for anyone to say for certain, but he seemed not to blink. One hand was in his pocket; had anyone else done it it would have been a casual gesture, but his arm looked frozen in place, his wrist bent at an awkward angle that he appeared not to notice.

He didn't shift his weight from one foot to the other, or cough, or move around at all the whole time. He was as still as the ocean floor; he always was; he never wavered in anything so much as a hair's breadth.

He showed up in her room an hour ago and had done nothing since but stand and look into empty space in silence. Orihime didn't ask why he was here or what he was doing; as far as she could tell he came and went whenever he felt like it and did nothing in between. In that and a multitude of other ways he was a mystery.

She would have been curious to know many things about him, but the likelihood of him actually telling her any of them was an infinitesimally small margin away from zero. If he had such a thing as a personal life, he hid it extremely well. But she had to have something, so she searched until she could find some less important thing to ask him, something that wouldn't make him snap at her. And that was when she looked up and that was when she asked the question and everything changed.

"Ulquiorra-san?"

He didn't startle; he just nodded his head a little and looked down at her. "What do you want?"

"Why green?" she queried.

He didn't even grace that with an answer.

"Your eyes and," she traced the progression of an imaginary teardrop down her cheek. "...Why green? I mean, where I come from it's just genetics, so it doesn't really matter. But you... here... it's like your soul, isn't it? So why green? There has to be a reason."

"Green is a color. It's meaningless," he said, shrugging (and that motion was strange too, almost like it was something that had been choreographed).

It would probably have ended there but for the fact that Orihime still had some courage left in her, and so she made up her mind that she was going to get this one question answered. (Because maybe he was strong, unfeasibly strong almost, but even he couldn't win all the time.)

"It's not meaningless. It makes me think of the trees in my world. Walking in the woods and looking at everything."

"Trees are meaningless, then."

"And they aren't meaningless either, not to me. Well," she conceded, "Maybe you had to be there."

"I've been to your world," he sniffed, "And it's every bit as much garbage as everyone in it. If you think it can even be compared to what Aizen-sama has made, you're deluding yourself again." "I think there are a lot of things there that you can't see here."

"All right then, woman. What's different about your trees and your green?"

So she told him. She told him about the green of the willows and how she admired their beauty (like long, slender women, hair whipping free in the wind– a woman who was a tall, tall tree could reach up and touch the clouds) until somebody told her that everyone knew they were weeping. And she felt like she had lost something and couldn't see why someone would look at those trees and think they were in tears or why a tree like that would want to cry– day in and day out. Their heads were bent down, she realized, and she should have noticed that before. They looked down into the depths of the water and cried green tears for it. So she sat beneath their shade for a while until she felt she was beginning to understand.

–Maybe she was only taking advantage of the fact that for once he might actually be listening–

And then there was the time when she was out wandering (one of the times when she was gone for days and Tatsuki had to come find her and bring her home) and she came across a little creek– just a little runt of a thing, but even the sound of the water in it was green somehow. There was a cloud of tadpoles circling around it too, until she reached in and tried to touch them. Then they fled like stray drops of ink, like scattered thoughts (but they would come back, she thought, and rearrange themselves in a new pattern, a new line of thought).

–Whatever the reason, she had been waiting for what felt like forever for someone, anyone, to listen; the words came spilling out of her all at once–

And Tatsuki did bring her home eventually, or else she found her own way back. That was okay too. Walking to school she would see scraggly little weeds crawling up from the cracks in the sidewalk. She always stepped around them as carefully as she could, and it never caused a problem until the day she was carrying a whole stack of books in her arms but still had to step aside suddenly to avoid one of the plants. The resulting wobbling sent the books flying and Chad had to turn back and ask her what she was doing.

But she explained it, and about how bad she felt whenever she saw somebody step on them (and they must have gone through so much work to get even this far; it wasn't their fault that they weren't the most beautiful things!). From that day forth, at least when they were together, Chad was careful about where he stepped too.

–So her voice alone filled the entire room–

(So green was the sound of birdsong but also the sound of traffic, because there was always something growing wherever she went.) She liked the moment she realized this; she was walking through the world and slowly coming to her own conclusions and that meant that she was growing too.

–The words spiraled out of her, grew up the walls, burst into flower–

Wherever she went, she liked looking at the sky. She liked it when the clouds made shapes for her, and her favorites were when they reached up from just beyond the horizon– like there was some great, serpentine dragon wrapped around everything and these were just small segments of its body. Imagine how huge the whole thing must be! She liked that thought; dragons made her think of Tatsuki. And Tatsuki made her think of everyone else; she remembered the constant sharp bickering between her friend and Chizuru; if it went on long enough it got a sort of rhythm to it.

–And there she was in the land of the dead, singing the living, green world back into being–

How many times had she felt that flutter in her chest when Kurosaki-kun came near? He never seemed to notice (Tatsuki told her not to even bother worrying about it; Ichigo was a blockhead who wouldn't notice if she drove a tank painted with the words I Love You through his bedroom wall). Yet he came anyway; he came _here_ just to look for _her_, and it was all so maddening...

...Until the moment she looked up and remembered whom she was talking to. People were coming looking for her, even if it was a stupid thing to do, even if she wasn't as powerful as Aizen seemed to think she was, even if she couldn't believe that she was worth it. Ulquiorra was one of the Espada. But she didn't believe for a moment that anybody would care enough about him to do something if anything happened to him.

"...So you're right, I suppose, about how everything will turn out. You probably know better than I do. But at least... at least they will have tried. At least they will have tried to bring me back. So I guess I'm proud to know people like that. That's all...."

–They were only words of course, painting a picture of ordinary things. But such words had never before been spoken in Hueco Mundo. Orihime trailed off; then there was a pause and then–

"Tell me more." He was still standing next to the door with one hand still in his pocket. His mouth remained an impassive line. But there was the tiniest change, like his brows had knit together the smallest bit, like there had been some movement in all the little muscles around his eyes. (And whatever it was, he was still the sort of person who didn't budge, not even a hair's breadth– but maybe the line that had to be crossed was thinner than that. And he had just crossed it.)

She looked up, shook her head, and sighed.

"I wish I could. But, you know, here... I think that's all I can do anymore."

"It wasn't that bad. I would like to see that."

"You've already been to my world, Ulquiorra-san. I mean, you could go back if you wanted; you could see it anytime you like."

He stood and thought for a moment, and then he closed his eyes and said, "I mean I'd like to see it the way you have seen it."

And then for a time there was silence. Maybe the best thing to do with that was to fill it.

"Ulquiorra-san? Why don't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"You tell me more. You just said that Las Noches was better than my world, but obviously I can't see whatever it is you're seeing in it. So tell me." She had never considered the possibility before, but now that she thought about it... How many thousands of things were there out there in the darkness, just waiting for someone who knew how to see them?

"...I'll think about it," he said at last. And she knew it meant, _I never thought to before_.

"Oh, and Ulquiorra-san? Don't worry. It's a good color for you, really. Remember that."


	2. Passing in the Night

A/N: Ah, a couple of people wanted to know what Ulquiorra's response was, so this is now a twoshot. This part isn't really in the same tone as the first one since it was written later and with a different focus, but I hope it's still acceptable.

* * *

Ulquiorra entered the room as quietly as a shadow; he didn't knock or give any greeting or even clear his throat to announce his presence. Orihime, lying on a chaise with her back turned to the door, looking at the shape of the moon in the high window above her, didn't realize he was there at all until he started talking.

"I have made an inventory as you requested," he said (curt, as always, curt), "Firstly, there are one hundred and twenty-seven spoons in total in the kitchen. Of these, approximately sixty percent are for regular eating purposes, thirty percent are included in the total of all the tea services, and the final ten percent are of a miscellaneous variety that I did not find it necessary to categorize. As for the constitution of the spoons themselves, the vast majority appear to be made of a silvery alloy– What is it, Woman?"

She had turned over and was staring at him with her mouth open. "Ulquiorra-san, what... um, what exactly are you doing?"

"Pay attention. I have already explained. This," he glanced down at the thin white binder in his hands, "Is the inventory. Completed just as you asked."

She could only tilt her head to one side and look even more puzzled.

"You have forgotten? I should have realized. The things you like are so small that even you forget them."

There was nothing in the expression on his face, nothing even remotely like hurt, but still she felt it: somehow, she had let him down. Whatever it was, she should have remembered.

"You asked me to make a list of some details about Las Noches for you. This was when you were talking about trees and rivers and... green things. I tried to concern myself with minor aspects of the palace to conform to your preference for minutiae."

He paused. "I have also collected many facts about Hueco Mundo in general. I was quite painstaking, of course. But none of this is what you wanted to hear. I know that."

"...I... that's okay. I mean, if you don't like it...." She shrugged.

He wasn't listening. He opened the binder, flipped through the pages a few times, then let it drop to the floor.

"I couldn't do it," he explained, still looking down at the white pages and his own sandal-clad feet. "I couldn't see any of those things you told me to look for. I tried, and yet... I just can't. I have come to the conclusion that this must be part of a trade-off of some sort: given that Hollows are superior to humans and the shinigami in all other respects, I suppose that it is unavoidable that there must be one thing at least at which you excel and we do not. And it's all this seeing... _feeling_... I simply cannot."

"I'm sorry?"

"You were looking at the moon just now; I can only assume that you were thinking something... emotional... about it. That is just what a human would do. It seems as though the moon has some special meaning to humans. Something like romance."

(Orihime just nodded mutely as that selfsame moon traced lines of mahogany and copper through her hair.)

"But you said you wanted to know about this place. So I will tell you about the moon. Do you look at it as some magical otherworld? It is not. You forget that this world is not like your own. There is no real, physical moon in Hueco Mundo; all there is is light, emptiness. What you look at and admire is void. And that is all there is for me to say about it."

"I didn't know that."

"You don't know anything about this place, nor do I believe that you really want to. What you really wanted to know was what I like. What I am like. I used to be– I have always been very devoted to Aizen-sama's great work. But do I like it? No, I simply do not _like_ at all. You pointed to this one color," he mimicked her earlier movements and raised a finger to the green teardrop marks on his face, "And thought it meant that you knew something about me. But you know nothing. You have ignored everything else that I am. The consciousness of an Espada is that which someone like you could not imagine, and your little views have no part in it."

"All right." That was all she could think to say– but he had clearly been mulling over this again and again and she wondered what she had started.

"This is something I cannot do. I don't know how," he elaborated– as if he were revealing some great, earth-shattering epiphany. And she just couldn't see it.

But whatever it was, it was bothering her now too, and it plucked at her brain. It was like someone had taken a needle to her face and stitched her mouth shut, and she watched herself with a sort of blank fascination as she said nothing when she wanted to say something, anything to him. So she forced the words out her mouth– an appropriate word, forced, because even in the silence of her own head they sounded fake.

They would still have to do.

"That's okay. Like I said, that's fine. The things I said meant nothing to you, right, Ulquiorra-san? Then just forget about it, okay? Forget I ever said anything."

(She was used to surrendering the things that mattered by now, she told herself. She had to be.)

There was a long pause. A breath of wind stirred outside– it was always like this here, Orihime had noticed; it would be as still as the dead (oh yes, very funny; it seemed that there really was nothing but the dead in this land) one moment, and then the next the wind would come roaring and wailing out of nowhere– and a few faint clouds of what looked like snow but was actually only sand swirled past the windowpane. Orihime knew they were there even before she peered over her shoulder to look at them. She could hear the small, dry sound of the grains of sand hitting the glass. Ulquiorra's gaze was fixed on the window too, but she could tell that wasn't what he was really looking at.

"I can't do that either; I can't forget. Those things you said... they won't get out of my head. And the fact that I can't...."

He fell silent again, his lips pressed together into a long, thin line. What he did not do was this: he did not lift a hand (those part-skeletal part-graceful white hands with their ugly black nails) to his breast, right to the spot where his heart was supposed to be but wasn't. He did not rub at that spot like the way one would rub and pick at a wound. He was far too disciplined to give that sort of tell.

But she saw it anyway, perhaps because she could see many things that he could not: she even thought she caught a glimpse of that split-second in which he wanted to give it all away.

Well, she did not have the sort of self-control he did, she knew it, and she instinctively reached up to place two fingers over her own heart– somehow soft and alive even in its cage of bone. He did not seem to notice; he had no heart.

"As I have told you many times before, Woman, I used to hold everything that is Las Noches in the highest respect. I used to admire this. And then I went back to look at it for you, to really look at it for the first time. I was trying to find out what it meant, as you would have done. And yes, there are many unique things in Hueco Mundo. Perhaps you would find them fascinating. But they are all of them grotesque, and I would like to think myself above that. A Menos is formed when one Hollow devours others, but that does not mean that the Menos itself is immune from being devoured in return. To be a Hollow is to never be safe.

"So what do those powerful enough to be a part of Aizen-sama's Espada do now? They only want to boast about how strong they are, how fearless; they want to show off their power. It's pathetic, their bravado. For all their claims to excellence, they have fallen too easily before your friends, mere shinigami. Fools. I always knew that I was not like the rest of them, that I had greater self-worth. I thought it was a good thing that I was superior, that I was Aizen-sama's most trusted. But soon, I am sure, he will make new Arrancar, better ones, and the open spots in the Espada will quickly be filled. And still, even if the new ones are stronger, they will be just as stupid and as petty-minded as those who came before. And the folly will go on forever. I am disgusted.

"And I don't know what I am supposed to think anymore."

Orihime hesitated; she wasn't entirely sure what it was that tipped her off (his expression was as blank as ever, blank like a field of snow), but somehow she could tell: he was actually _upset_.

"I suppose that you'll have to figure out what to think on your own, then...? That's what most people do, Ulquiorra-san."

"I see. So that's what you think. Do you think yourself clever, Woman?"

"What?"

"You do, despite all your obvious foolishness. I see now. Do you think you are doing me some sort of kindness? You who are so soft, who always prefers compromise– you planned to _disillusion_ me about this world then bring me back to your own as an ally. But you are the one who holds illusions. Nonsense. Even if you act with your pitiable good intentions, even so. What you did last time we spoke– I believe that is what is called poetry. And I really thought it was true. For a few hours, I truly did.

"Liar," he hissed, "You are a liar. I did what you said and I thought about myself and at first I thought there might be something there to find. Something... _poetic_. So tell me, Woman, you who think you know so much, you who think you have some sort of _sight_. Tell me what I saw."

She lowered her eyes to where her hands lay useless in her lap and shook her head. What else could she do?

He reached up to the high collar of his jacket and pulled the zipper down to about an inch below his collarbone; he trailed his bony fingers across the hole at the base of his throat.

"Nothing. I saw nothing but darkness, never-ending. People like you, you probably believe in a center, don't you, a core? A soul. But there is nothing in me but emptiness. None of your stupid hopeful fairytales. And all your poetry– lies. And it's not just me; the same holds true for all the world. Your green Earth is a trifle. Hueco Mundo is the heart of the universe, and the heart is barren."

(Orihime, who couldn't help what she saw, thought of black water, of the way you could never know how deep it was until you stepped in and found yourself falling down to infinity.)

He was right. She knew it. She was wrong. No matter what color his eyes were, he had nothing in common with her green, breathing world. She too had never considered him for what he truly was.

So she would do so now. What his world must breathe with was a frigid, merciless wind, the kind that had always poked needles of ice through her body with every winter. He belonged to a world of bare rock embossed only with coldness, a pale Antarctic horizon, the Sakhalin of history lessons. (A world where even ever-hopeful life could not aspire to take hold.) All that could exist there would have to be stripped of its tender, fragile flesh; it would be raw, all bare white bones. (With her eyes, she traced the curve of the plate of bone that stretched across his scalp, feeling all the way to the sharp tip of the horn.)

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, and a minute passed in silence as he tried to find the right words.

"Go ahead, Woman, and tell me."

(She clasped her hands together out of some instinct and felt all the muscles in her back tense up.)

"Tell me what I'm supposed to do."

Orihime always was a person who tried to be kind, and yes, she had been hoping to do him a kindness. Was that so wrong? Oh, but one look at his pained-not-pained eyes told her that she had not succeeded in that. She had more than merely failed.

But maybe she had set him free. (She had never thought about it like this before, but who ever said that freedom had to be pleasant anyway? Freedom was what happened when the lid was lifted off the world and the sky overhead was all of a sudden too high, too cold and pitiless. Empty and open.)

It came to her then, the realization (not like a spark shooting out of the darkness, no, but more akin to searching fingers finally closing around their object): he didn't know yet what it meant to stand in eternal night. He didn't know yet (the fool! More of a fool by far than she ever was) that he had far more of a soul than she could ever hope for; he must have never heard of frail, ascetic sages, of long-suffering martyrs (still so full of doubt, even as to their own causes).

He didn't know that this sort of bitterness was a spiritual condition.

"I think," she began, "I don't think you should lie. I think you should tell the truth, all of it. Even if it's really awful, I think you should. Because... I don't know, maybe the world needs people who can do that."

(She didn't say, I think _you_ need for you to do that.)

But she will get there eventually. She knows. Because she has found at least one thing that she can do, even here; somehow, she will get him to keep speaking his truth.

And it will be like this: they'll be walking somewhere out in the countryside– maybe just the two of them, maybe with their other friends (because someday, _someday_)– through fields and forest. And the sky will be that perfect, absolutely perfect end-of-May blue, cloudless. She'll be wearing a blue sun dress, and its fabric will breathe against her legs– for there will be just the barest hint of a breeze. (And yes, there will have to be that summer smell in the air.... Who would ever have thought that soil would smell so good, so warm?)

Ulquiorra will look out of place there, won't he? He'll still look so crisp and formal even in summer casual. And as they pick their way through the tall grass, she'll look around like always and praise everything: the feeling of the sun against their skin, the dainty stalks of wild flowers, the dragonfly that darts in front of them for a second....

But he will just shake his head ever so slightly at everything she says, and he will tell her how petty all those things are, how meaningless. They are not true, he will say (disparaging as ever), and therefore they cannot be beautiful.

And he will tell her how all that is beautiful in the world is that which is black and white, bitter and harsh and despairing.


End file.
